Travel Blog as an ESL Teaching Tool

Abstract

Current stage of ICT development necessitates the improvement of teaching tools, skills, and learning outcomes. The article discusses bright educational prospects of travel blogging for students of English as a second language (ESL). The authors suggest a short theoretical overview of research into travel blogosphere’s educational opportunities, while discussing a classification of travel blogs according to the type of sender vs receiver communication. On a wide and modern textual material the article considers such prominent features of travel storytelling as polysemantic vocabulary, compact meaning representation, strategies to present cultural information and verbal creativity which can be of true interest for students of B2 level and above. The readers can also learn about a few forms of activity with travel stories which are individual special sampling with some specific focus (pun, irony, creative instances of word building), presentation of foreign culture by means of English, project work for a small group of enthusiasts, sampling stories by country, by area or by activity, and presenting one concise story to the classroom, as their own post or a paper brochure.

The Implementation of Mind Mapping Technique by Using Weblog in Improving Students’ Islamic Writing: Achievement and Insight

“…They also feel happy about learning Islamic values. In line with the results of the interview, Travel blog writing, according to Romaniukha et al (2020), should be incorporated into the ESL classroom through project work activities because it encourages students to introduce cultural concepts, which provides opportunities for enriched language use and enhanced verbal creativity. Using a blog as a digital genre in the English classroom, according to Pascual (2019), allows for the use of communicative language teaching, task-based learning, and process-based writing, as well as the development of students' communicative and digital abilities and genre awareness.…”

“…Another positive perception expressed by the respondents towards weblog-based Islamic literature learning is that they think weblogs are a good learning medium because through blogs they can express and share their ideas regarding their perspective on Islamic values. According to Pascual (2017) and Romaniukha et al (2020), incorporating this genre into EFL settings will improve language abilities, promote verbal creativity, and boost learning motivation. Weblogs are an effective approach to integrating technology with education both inside and outside the classroom.…”